Welcome back!  A warm new year’s greeting is extended to all our clients and friends.  We are back after an pleasant and relaxing break with families and hope that those of you now back from enjoying the holiday season in the Oz sunshine are well tanned, recharged and as excited about the coming year as are we (well minus the tan because it, well… rained… a lot).  To those of you in the northern hemisphere blessed by snow we hope you had the opportunity to relax beside a crackling fire and laugh with good friends.   

We have started work on a long list of  new features and enhancements to our governance software suite: BPC RiskManager, and, assuming the world doesn’t come to an end this year, we think you are going to like what is coming – but more on that in future posts. 

Our four main service lines -  Software Sales,  Custom Software,  Survey Hosting and Consulting have opened the year with the strongest bookings in a number of years so 2012 looks like it will be an interesting and busy year.  The Custom Software and Consulting teams are now fully committed for the first quarter (obviously sales and hosting don’t have capacity limits) , which is a good way to start the new year.  

2011 was a great year at BPC, and we thank you, our clients and friends for your on going dedication and support – without you we don’t exist.  To our clients, while we don’t get to see many of you personally, our regular telephone conversations and email communications make us feel we know each of you as friends.  We couldn’t ask for a better bunch of clients – loyal, considerate, helpful cooperative, inspirational and fun.   A simple “thank you” just doesn’t seem enough.

 For BPC RiskManager V6 users there has recently been a major update released with lots of new features and a couple of progressive updates since then, so for those with current maintenance subscriptions, make sure you contact us and get the update, and those of you without, make sure you get yourself current and we’ll get you the update.

It seems like we have been on the 6.2.5.x Beta Stream forever, but a couple of weeks ago we quietly released the full auto-installing and auto-upgrading production release version of RiskManager V6.2.8.   It seems word got out, because many of you have been contacting us for upgrades to the new production release.  

 This version is currently released in the V6.2.5.32 build production installer for now.  It ships the V6.2.8 database with the V6.2.5.32 application server and client.  In a little while we will re-release it officially as V6.2.8, but we need to update all the marketing material when that happens – which is a significant effort and takes us away from adding cool stuff into the application suite.  We are absolutely flat out right now with work orders – so we are holding off doing the stuff that doesn’t help you directly – like new brochures.   There are a couple of additional new features that we are working on which will probably make it into the V6.2.8 official version – but essentially the V6.2.5.32 production build is the 6.2.8 release.  Any one that installs now will get an update notice emailed to them when the renamed 6.2.8 installer is released if there is anything different (other than the name) – and it will be just a matter of replacing a couple of files.

Unlike the beta stream, 6.2.5.32 ships as a full auto-upgrading installer and will become the new productions release against which the next auto-installer will auto upgrade your database.   The installer will take any version of RiskManager from V6.1.x up to the current 6.2.5.32 build and V6.2.8 database.

So all the cool enhancements we have been working on for the last couple of years that have been in the Beta stream are now in this new production release, with as usual some more stuff added.

Most of you have been enjoying many of these features for some time now because you have been taking the Beta releases, so the changes will seem more incremental than dramatic – which of course is the idea behind the frequent Beta release programme.   True to form, we haven’t stopped updating, the production release already has a Beta patch which will take you to build 6.2.5.34, but until the 6.2.8 renaming, we are updating the production installer every few days anyway.   The next production installer update will be out next Wednesday.  

There are so many enhancements being added across the modules it is easy to miss stuff, so after you install the new app turn on incident management (if you haven’t already) and take a look at what has happened to the incident system!   The version in 6.2.5 was written back in 2006 – and it was begging for some attention – well it just got it.   I hope you like what you see, but this is just the tip of the iceberg – the 6.2.8 engine has heaps more it can do with incidents and that is about to be unveiled over the next couple of releases.

We won’t run this next Beta stream so long this time – maybe just a couple of months because we want to wrap up the V6.2.x series and move onto V7

Our existing clients will know that our version numbering is a serious understatement of what is being added as we are likely to add an entire new module in just an incremental build number change – so if we are jumping from 6.2.x to 7.0 you can imagine the dramatic enhancements we have planned for next year. 

 Here’s a hint of what is coming:  You won’t be managing “risks” or “compliance obligations” for much longer – they will be Governance Topics.  You wont be asking “what can go wrong?” but “how can we achieve our planned objective?”.   All the V6 stuff will be there, and the V6.2.8 database has largely accommodated the V7 view of the world – so V7 will be an auto-upgrade  from V6 – so keep you maintenance subscriptions current because you’ll get it at no extra cost.  More on this new approach in later articles.

For now a couple of things about V6.2.8 / V6.2.5.32.   You will notice that a new risk type will be automatically added called “incidents” with a BG  of incidents and a BU of I-Well and Risk of I-Well.  This is the “incident well” for incidents that are otherwise “unattached” to a risk.  Don’t delete them – you need them for the safety module incidents handling to work properly and appear in all reports.    The I-Well is a generic risk for otherwise unlinked incidents.

The incident engine has a whole lot of different reportable event types in it now, as well as a method for tracking the reports action and a work flow of incident handling.  You can still design your own additional attributes and properties, but the current single table view is about to change so that their will be different sets of attributes for each incident type.

You will also notice that the certification / SOX / Sched7  system will insist on creating a “root” account of  “0000″ called “Root”.  Don’t delete this either – if you do it will be automatically recreated.  This is the root of your chart of accounts.  It will allow you to have several different “sets of books” in the chart for different organisations, etc.  All accounts ultimately descend from this root account.  The reason it exists is to ensure that there are no orphan account trees for role ups.

For those of you who have been using master-child risk/compliance relationships (which should be everybody, right?), the roll up engine now rolls up everything – that means that financial values, likelihood, impact, control, assertions, breach flags, etc are rolled up as well as the residual ratings.  (Not the sub tables though – like incidents or causes, except for assertions).  This means that the strange anomalies in bubble charts for master risks are no longer there, BUT you can not set master risk likelihood, consequence, control, assertion responses and ratings or financial values independent of their children once roll up is engaged.   In particular the assertions roll up will float all child assertions up to the master risk/obligation – with the responses according the to assertion roll up rule (so make sure these are set).  Breach flags in the master risks can therefore be triggered by breaches in children – or non completion of assertion responses.  This makes a lot more sense that the old way of doing it, but you might need to re-jig some of your structures a little if you have been treating master risks as just another risk.

This release also surfaces test plans for the certification/compliance module which have been brewing for a while now and are finally appearing.  Again this is a first taste of this stuff, with much more appearing as fast as we can get the screens done.  The 6.2.8 DB already has the tables in it for the soon-to-be-released parts.  For now you can create, design, schedule and manage test plans, and in a few weeks you will be able to record and review the test outcomes and progress as well.

We pulled the claims module back from earlier BETA release of a few months ago so we can do more work on it, but it is only temporary, it will be back in in the new year.   We simply have not had the time to get back to that with all the other client requests we have been working on.  Also we decided that there were some other modules that required attention before claims would work as intended – one of those is obviously incidents.

Lastly you will note there are three different kinds of governance topics – not two as in most governance views:

1. General Risks
2. Compliance / certification obligation risks
3. Compliance Topics/Events

We will eventually rename these but for now this is what they mean: general risks are either project or general “corporate” risks of a future event, compliance obligation risks are the risk of a compliance obligation not being met – IE. the risk of non-compliance, while compliance topics are the compliance events that must are either occurring and must be managed back to compliance or are likely to occur without if ignored.  Every governance topic can be seen  in any of these views simultaneously – as a general risk, as a compliance obligation, or as a compliance event. 

 The main difference between the two ways of looking at compliance is that a compliance risk focuses on strategies / controls to minimise the causes of compliance failure and hence the risk of non compliance, while the compliance topic screen focuses on actions required to remediate the causes of the non compliance and then the control “learning” from that experience.

The two views come about because of the slightly different slant arising from financial statements compliance – where we wish to be able to assert a level of confidence in (and be entitled to assume reliance on)  a set of values in the FMS  to a level of materiality, versus document compliance – legislation or policy  - where there is no allowance for materiality but where active remediation is a defence.

The names are not the best in the RM suite – and apologise for this in advance – but it comes from our need to marry the two different views of compliance where both types of client use the same terminology for fundamentally different ideas and approaches, and our desire to allow you to switch between the two views “live” . 

So what is currently in the RiskManager V6.2.x suite ? 

• Risk management – general and corporate
• Assessments and assessment outcome management
• Compliance obligations – legislation, documents, policies, procedures, etc
• Certification /SOX / Sched7
• Compliance events
• Document management for legislation, policy, procedures, etc, with risk maps and review reminders
• Insurance
• Incidents & safety
• Test plans
• Audit management
• Assertions / compliance questions (Indefinite length and indefinite banks of assertions/questions for each obligation)
• Multiple assessments of each governance topic
• Corporate planning with obligations linked to risks / governance topics
• Snap-shots / milestones (with support for ‘what-if’ using restorable milestones)
• Surveys, custom and control self assessment
• Review and responsibility control on almost everything with reminders
• Work flow
• Process – charting
• Custom scripting engine
• End user report writer + import/export engine
• Tree views with governance topics in multiple tree branches simultaneously
• Master detail roll up relationships
• QBE Topic Search
• Full granular – multi-user security controlling who sees what obligation – internal, AD, LDAP, NT-Groups
• Multiple risk modelling systems (formula or tabular)
• Works as a single user install or massively multi-user install with a tiny footprint
• Internal messaging and task management/tracking

This list doesn’t really do it justice because some of these could inspire entire sublists of features, but these are the “big picture” items.

There is another update to RM BETA15 – as promised in the BETA15 blog post -  BETA15_4.   This is the fourth update since last Friday, and there are more coming.  Obviously, things a re very busy at BPC at the moment! 

The target cutoff for this BETA was intended to be Tuesday, but since everyone suddenly seems to have awoken from a light sleep this last week, and particularly since our BETA15_1 release we may extend for an extra few days and we are receiving lots of requests and suggestions most of which are rapidly doable at the moment.  

The main projects getting a look-in in the BETA15 sub-sequence are:

• RM – Survey Engine Integration
• Compliance/Certification (Financial Statement Elements)  Project
• Compliance Topic Solver (simplification) Project
• Insurance Claims Management
• Safety (Incidents and Hazards) Project
• Workflow Project

Essentially there is a lot of new or improved functionality being turned on in this BETA.  In a number of cases there are features that have been present for some time, but not fully engaged with the rest of the system because other  features were required to make them fully functional that are now ready, or they required us to take the “force a DB change” step to make them work properly.  This is what is happening now.  We are now alao trying to shut down the BETA sequence and move to the release of V6.2.7 as quickly as possible.

So in the interests of managing the flood of email enquiries I am going to post here a little more regularly about what we are doing.  This should help you decide whether you take any BETA15 (almost nightly) build or wait until we stabilise it on BETA16.   BETA16 will most likely be a short staging step until the release of V6.2.7 which will be virtually identical to BETA16, except for any fixes required from BETA16. 

BETA15_4 has:

•  Additional survey engine integration fields and now fully supports survey organisation selection throughout.  This is important so that the RM client can see all the orgs that the SM client can build;
• A new survey question library tab in the risk maintenance screen to allow selection of individual questions from the survey engine to be linked with individual risks.  The initial version of this tab allows individual already created survey questions to linked with risks.  This will be expanded in the next BETA15; 
• A recasting of types of the survey reference fields held in RM tables from varchar to nvarchar.  The survey engine was written to use Unicode characters, while the RM uses standard ASCII.   When we brought the two engines together many years ago the fields in RM that held SM references were created as ASCII fields to be consistent with RM.  That has now been changed so that the cross link fields now all use the standard SM field types.   In RM version 7 we will be going full Unicode, and this is an initial nod in that direction;
• Control Self Assessment surveys now attempt to build themselves in the survey org that is linked to the risk’s owning business unit, rather than in the global default survey organisation.  With the surfacing of survey org’s in RM this just makes better sense;
• Survey Reporting views in the RM survey client that “timed out” in BETA15_1 and BETA15_2 when there were more than 30,000 survey responses have now Bent fixed so they display correctly.  This was actually caused by the reports not being “survey organisation aware” so they were making a Cartesian product when the same survey appeared in multiple organisations ;
• Added lookup searches to the various screens where survey organisations are referenced so that you do not have to know the name of the survey org when you are trying to link it to a RM business unit, etc.
• Added a page to “setup profiles” to enable the creation of survey orgs from within RM;
• The “Global Survey Org” is now just an initial and default survey organisation where you have not defined a survey org to mirror a RM Business Unit;
• A significantly expanded range of risk/compliance fields have been surfaced in the maintain compliance screen, and renaming of some of the existing fields to allow better dynamic captioning choices that distinguish the fields from their risk view counterparts.  There is more happening here between the Solve Topics and Maintain Compliance screens to simplify the screens and make the compliance display less dependent on the Risk View to display additional detail;
• Added “Financial Statement Element” display field to the compliance screen along with the “Document/Section” field.  You can use either or none.
• Added workflow creation and editing to the Risk and Compliance object (with extra buttons on each maintenance screen to enable workflow maintenance therefrom.

Another release is coming tomorrow, I will try and tell you about that then.

BETA15_4 is on the download site – use your client ID to access.   It contains an updated script to build a database from scratch.  We have taken out the DB create command, so you should create your DB first then run the script to build the inside your new DB.  It is SQL Server 2000+ compatible, then use the accompany in XL sheets to load in the initial data.  There is one sheet per table that requires initialisation.  If using your existing DB you will need to contact us to convert your DB until the BETA16 is released, or possibly after if you have one of the intermediate DB versions.  The current DB version is V6.2.7

This is not the official release announcement of BETA15, but a number of you noticed that we uploaded a new BETA to the download sites a couple of days ago.  That release is meant for a number of identified clients who are testing specific features, and for those of you who want to load the latest version.  We did not realise how many of you were actively monitoring our download site and were surprised by the number of people that grabbed it within a few hours of the first release.

You may have noticed that since then there have been 2 more updates to BETA15.  This is why we did not “officially” announce it.  There are a number of things that are a day or so away from completion, and so we could get some feedback before the official release we agreed to do a rolling nightly release for a few days.

This will be the case for the next few days – a nightly update with a new complete DB build script included while we include each of the extra features not yet included in the build.  The current release is BETA15_2, but tomorrow there will be a BETA15_3 and so on.

If you want the latest nightly build you are welcome, but understand that this is a moving feast until the official announcement – that will appear on this blog as usual.

To avoid confusion, we will probably stabilise on BETA16 as the announced release. 

BETA15 uses the V6.2.7 database – so it will NOT work with your V6.2.6 databases (BETA14).  You will require an upgrade script or to forward your databases to us for free conversion.  Except for those clients specifically engaged in this release sequence, we will not be converting databases until the stable version is released as there is a (very slim) chance that the DB will be changed during the next couple of days.

If you think you need special consideration – don’t hesitate to contact me via email and we will attempt to cooperate.

Thanks for the excited interest – it is much appreciated.  I will know next time not to try and sneak a new release out, you guys are all way to keen and astute for that.

The official announcement – when it is made – will include detail of what has been added.

There are more than 270 tables and views in BPC RiskManager v6.x.  Not all of these tales and views are visible by default in the BPC RiskManager report builder.  Further you can expand the system by adding your own tables and views to the database. 

There are three main reporting systems in RM – the inbuilt reports (these can not be expanded), the end-user reports (BPC RM ReportBuilder), and mail-merge/office template  style reporting.  Of these, the primary reporting tool for end user reporting is the BPC RiskManager ReportBuilder reporting engine.   

So how do you make these tables and views available to the BPC Risk Manager  end user report development tool (report builder) so that you can report on them in your own reports?  Fortunately BPC RiskManager allows you to add these things directly in the BPC RiskManager client to the reporting engine so you can include them in your reports.

By way of an example, we will add the  actions progress table to the end user reporting layer and hook it in to the magic-query maker, so that when you use the table in your reports it automatically hooks it to the appropriate master table or view (in this case “search_risk_actions”).  We are adding a raw table, rather than a view, so we will add the word “raw” to the name so that we distinguish it from the views.  The difference between the tables and the views is that the views populate the table’s look-up fields with the description field of the look up table.

In the RM client, on the Administration tab:

1. Go to Administration/Report Builder/Table Names
2. Select “New”
3. Enter in the fields:

• Table_name: RISK_ACTION_PROGRESS
• Table alias: Action Progress Raw

(Note the spaces in the above)

1. Select save.
2. Got to Administration/Report Builder/Field Names
3. Select “Add Fields”
4. In the pop-up box enter: RISK_ACTION_PROGRESS
5. Select “Ok” – this will add the field names.
6. Got to Administration/Report Builder/Table Joins
7. Select “New”
8. Enter in the fields:

• Table_name1: SEARCH_RISK_ACTIONS
• Table_name2: RISK_ACTION_PROGRESS
• Join_Type: dajtLeftOuter
• Field_names1: Action ID
• Operators: =
• Field_name2: ACTION_ID

NOTE the space in the Field_names1 “Action ID”

1. Select “Save”
2. Close the administration window.

The risk_action_progress table and its fields will now be available to Report Builder.

Risk Manager V6 Update Notice

BPC RiskManager V6.2.5.25 – BETA14 has been released.  This version mandates the V6.2.6 database.  BETA15 is a production ready release.    The V6.2.6 database is transitional, in that the BETA cycle will see us move to at least V6.2.7 before it is finished.  

Clients who have upgraded their databases to the V6.2.6 can install this release directly.

Included in this release:

RiskManager Client

• Flow Chart Designer hooks have been expanded and you can now invoked the designer directly from the risk maintenance screen.  Flow charts are linked to the business processes and business sub-processes, among other things.
• New integrated work flow support for flowcharts and expanded scripting RM/Work flow interface.   This is a substantial internal update.  Workforce diagramming is now directly supported from process and sub process definition screens rather than as a separate engine.  Work flows diagrams can be executed and are scriptable with interfacing calls that can invoke screens in RM.  The internal update lays the framework for a substantial expansion in the role of Work flow and flowcharting.
• Surfacing of most of the remaining risk attributes to the Windows desktop client including financial data, additional audit fields for planning and documents.  These includes estimates for loss (or gain).
• Significant expansion in the ability to selectively hide functionality.
• Addition of various features to the insurance centre as part of the introduction of claims support.

(Note: The new claims screens are now scheduled for BETA 15.)

RiskManager App Server

• Updated Bulk Importer with support for:
  • data value transformation and mapping,
  • push feed to the survey engine allowing auto-submission of scanned survey data
  • improved table selectors

RM SurveyManager

• Ongoing expansion of survey structure capabilities.  A number of additions have been made to the SM engine to support risk register rating via survey.  This is an ongoing upgrade and will continue progressively for a few more releases.  This first group of enhancements adds additional tags to better enable risk register style surveys. 

Please Note: 

BETA releases are intended for deployment by clients the same as full version releases.  Deployment usually involves replacing a few files by copying.  The BETA tag refers to the release packaging that does not usually include an auto-installer, auto-upgrader (other than for the desktop client) and that the take up is of the BETA is optional.  This means that a client can take the latest beta without having taken any previous Beta’s and we will guarantee to provide a customised DB upgrade.  Support is only promised for the latest BETA and the previous full release.  Clients using older BETA’s may be required to upgrade to the current BETA before support is provided.  The BETA release stream is also a way for us to extend the life of client subscriptions on version linked licenses. 

Documentation Updates

Go and look at the riskwiki  for documentation updates.  We have been busy adding new papers under a number of headings including new discussions of the community “network stakeholder model” and survey manager and risk manager user manuals.

Clients using email messaging on BETA11 or BETA12:

 There is a new version of RiskMailManager available in each of your client folders and on the general product download sites.  The BETA12 package has also been updated and  re-issued.  This new version has been issued in its own package and the BETA12 packages have been updated for those yet to update.

To upgrade it simply replace the RiskMailManager.exe in the applicationfiles directory of your BPC RiskManager V625 server installation with the new file in the zip.  Discard the previous version – it is a blight on the world and does not deserve to be remembered. 

The revised RiskMailManager addresses a problem that may stop the template reader from loading your message templates under certain configurations.  All clients using RM Beta 11 or 12 are advised to update the RiskMailManager application, regardless of whether you are experiencing mail problems or not.

BETA 12 Warning:  BETA12 requires are complex database update.  If you wish to upgrade to BETA12 you are advised to request a customised database upgrade script or request us to do it for you.  Alternatively, wait a little longer for BETA13 which will include an installer. 

Read the previous post for the content of BETA12.

BPC RiskManager V6.2.5.22 – BETA12 has been released.  This version mandates the V6.2.6 database, so it is the first BETA that officially makes the jump to V6.2.6, although we will continue with the V6.2.5 numbering until we are out of the BETA upgrade cycle.  BETA12 is a production ready release.  The V6.2.6 database is transitional, in that the BETA cycle will see us move to at least V6.2.7 before it is finished.

The V6.2.6 DB changes have actually been creeping into the DB scripts progressively across the BETA’s but the server and client have not used most of the V6.2.6 changes (or at least not required them) until this release.  We normally feed the major DB changes into the DB structure up to 12 months in advance of  utilising them in a client.  Only when the feature is required in production do we clock over the DB Version number.  (There is actually one DB feature that has been in the system since approximately 1998 that is still waiting to get to the top of the to-do list,  and in that case the code to use the feature is already written, tested and has been utilised in other production applications, but the anticipated requirement has simply not yet surfaced in the market place.) 

In V6.2.5.22  includes:

• Updated - Insurance policy management.  Intended for “Insureds” (holders of insurance policies) rather than insurers (issuers) or insurors (agents).  Insurance policy management holds details such as contacts, coverage, exclusions, history, financial data, and renewal information.  Each Insurance policy can be tied to a type of control which in turn can template, classify and optionally standardise strategies and controls applied to governance matters such as risks, compliance obligations, CR risks, and other governance obligations.  Insurance policies also link to incidents and governance matters (risks, etc.) via claims management.   This release sees the surfacing of additional data fields, new report views and connection of the insurance renewal reminder and review systems to the messaging system.
• Upgraded Email Messaging.  More internally tracked responsibilities have now been added as uniquely managed messages to the mail & message queueing system.  This is available regardless of whether or not you enable email dispatch through the BPC MailManager.  (IE. the messaging system and email tracking works regardless of whether the emails are actually being sent . )  Among the additions are document, section and insurance renewals.
• New - Risk Milestones.  A milestone is restorable a snapshot of a risk.  Milestones existed in BPC RiskManager from version 1, but with the move from Version 5 to 6 the milestones were dropped in favour of a much more expanded continuous audit logging system with dedicated search, a much expanded assessment tracking and management system and the existing restorable archives.   These facilities did most of what milestones did and provided a much wider range of additional capabilities for search, multiple concurrent users assessing risk,  and data extraction.  There were some things that the logging system, et al did not satisfy however, and that includes a simple way to deliver a chart showing risks at an instance in time, or run multiple “what if” analyses (and store the results in a restorable way, and returning to the official values).   So Milestones are back and improved, with milestone types, descriptions, dates, etc, and charts.   There will be lots more happening here over the coming months.
• New Milestone Charts – Track changes in I/C/R ratings over multiple years, etc.
• New Profile Chart – expands the display of assessments against I/R ratings to the current + 2 assessments allowing either 3 time based assessments or current self/reviewer, previous self/reviewer  and previous-previous self/reviewer assessments simultaneously.
• New Email Message Template reports.
• New Auto-Add feature for the Report Builder interfacing engine so that risk-system-administrator-end-users can add custom or rarely used views and tables to the reporting engine reportable data.  If you know the name of the table or view this feature will mine it and build a definition for ReportBuilder  (Report builder is packaged into every client).  Now nothing is hidden!
• New Views for assertion reporting, number capture, etc.
• Updated BPC RiskMailManager (Email message batching) to accommodate the new mail queues in this version.

BETA12 is on the client download site (you will need your username and password), but if applying the BETA12 patch we STRONGLY  advise you to contact us so that we can assist with the DB conversion.   There are a couple of messy changes to tables that are mirrored or version tracked and some new FK constraints that may require more personalised attention depending on your data.  

 Those preferring to skip the BETA’s and wait for the full installer that is shipped with the official release, should be looking about 1 to 2 month’s out from now.

The next BETA release – due end of next week – will include a big update to claims processing and the compliance obligations.

BETA10 and BETA11 are now available.  BETA10 will work with the DB version in the standard V6.2.5.6 installer (DB Version 6.2.5), but you will need to apply at least a change to the SEARCH_RISKS view in the DB.   A script is available to apply the upgrade.

With BETA11 we have finally decided to commit to the new data structure that has been waiting in the wings for about 8 months.  We continued with the BETA stream on the old 6.2.5 DB structure as long as we could, but now it is hampering our ability to move to the next generation of the RM system.

BETA11 actually uses Release 1. of the new V6.2.6 DB structure and will NOT work with the V6.2.5 Database entirely.  The client and server have been designed to accept the V6.2.5 data structure and apply some intelligent field and table selections based on the differences between the data structures but the client will generate several “non-critical” error warning messages on start up as it attempts to access tables that do not exist in the V6.2.5 data structure.   Obviously, this is not appropriate for production installs. 

The BETA11 structure includes a number of revisions to the data layouts to remove some organisational unnecessary restrictions that in some cases date back over 10 years and surface a raft of new insurance, claims, incident and compliance capabilities.  We are currently working closely with a number of clients feeding requirements for their real-world compliance, claims and OHS operational needs and the V6.2.6 DB structure is intended to meet the architectural requirements of these clients. 

This has been a large project commencing over 12 months ago with just a couple of clients, and over the intervening period has expanded substantially as many more of you have joined the BETA team to provide your own version of these related needs.

BETA11 is a production stable release BUT, for production your DB must be upgraded to the V6.2.6 structure.  We have not built an auto-installer for BETA11 (see below for the reason for this decision), and so if you wish to use it in production you should email me and we will make it available for direct download on your client login page.  In each case we will build a custom upgrade script against our copy of your reference database, or (preferably) we will hand upgrade your database, but you will need to make a backup of your current production database for the  purpose.   For a custom upgrade script against a reference database there will be a small fee.  For a upgrade performed by us against a backup of your production database forwarded to us there will be NO fee.  (The custom script takes a lot longer  to make and is more error prone than if you provide us with a backup of your production database and we run a delta analysis between it and our master reference databases using our tools on our hardware and then provide the upgraded DB back to you – so we are clearly trying to encourage you to do the latter).

The issues are that:

•  the 6.2.6 DB involves some fairly tricky table structure changes to foreign key and version table structures that are very hard to automate outside of the installer package and the installers take about 5 hours to build.  
• the 6.2.6 DB structure is being changed in 3 steps (Release 1 is available now) because we are adding some features that are being designed on-the-fly with a number of clients who want to be able to try some ideas and then enhance and expand the ideas so there are more parts coming over the next two to three weeks.
• there are significant developments occurring on multiple fronts at once which should complete over the next month, so the significant cost in building the installers with automated DB version upgrades is better delayed until there is more stability in the DB structure

Having said that, a conversion to the 6.2.6 structure NOW is safe to do because future changes will be minor enhancements rather than the fundamental re-organisation of a number of tables that the 6.2.5 to 6.2.6 change represents. 

So what should you do?  If you really want to be part of the compliance-insurance-claims-OHS BETA stream – do the change.  If you are happy to use the facilities as we design and build them, then wait until the stable build with the automated installer is released.

What is in BETA11 ?

• Insurance has been moved from being a relatively hidden feature of strategy – control and type-of-control design to front and centre of a new Insurance panel.
• Claims management has been added
• Incidents have been moved from being only a slave table of Risk to being handled independent of risks and able to be linked back to multiple risks (and claims and insurance, etc).
• Legal management has been added to allow for the tracking of legal resources associated with a claim.
• Fixes to screen handling in documents to ensure the document and section master lists are refreshed when documents and sections are added
•  New default inherent likelihood rating level can be set for new unrated topics
• The bubble chart now allows the minimum bubble size to be set so they can be stopped from shrinking to a single pixel when most risks/compliance items are in a single bubble.
• “My Responsibility” summary now accounts for delegated responsibilities.  (Under the cover the responsibility summariser has been hugely expanded to cover all responsibilities in the database so you will soon see a substantially expanded responsibility tracking screen in “My RiskManager” that covers everything for which you have any responsibility).
• A large number of new rules capabilities have been added to the surveymanager engine and enhancements to the JavaScript library.   There is more happening on this front as we progressively expand the direct SurveyManager to RiskManager cross table access.  Our aim on this front is to eliminate the need for the intervening results table to interface the survey engine screens with the RiskManager tables.

Beta 12 will be released this week – look to Friday.  It will mainly be a refinement of the things in Beta11 and expansion (hopefully completion) of the claims management capabilities.  Beta11 is not available as a browser plug-in-client (only in desktop download).

We have been busy with updates to the riskwiki (and the BPC SurveyManager library and BPC SurveyManager Maintenance WebClient).  The riskwiki has had various improvements and updates to the survey manager documentation including a long list of examples and explanations of the input controls and the first of our tutorials on creating particular survey layouts.

The tutorials are at:

BPC SurveyManager Tutorials

 We will be adding more as time permits.

The illustrated list of input controls is at http://riskwiki.bishopphillips.com/index.php?title=BPC_SurveyManager_-_Questions_and_Input_Controls

Among the new features recently added to the BPC SurveyManager libraries is a new password protected portal mode, so you can  now selectively surface surveys in each organisation to a simple portal without writing a portal survey of your own.   We have added more capabilities to the auto publish functions so that you can have anonymous responders for any survey by setting a flag, and impose login requirements per survey without adding user login questions at the start.

The portal mode will be particularly useful to teachers running classed based surveys, because you can now use the portal on a class wide basis in a school based computer for all students to concurrently access a class based survey without you having to publish to them first or send invitations.

There is lots more coming to survey manager over the next few weeks so keep tuned.   Among the changes coming to the SM library is a significant expansion of Survey Manager’s ability to directly interrogate and update risk, insurance claims and incident tables for those using BPC SurveyManager as part of their BPC RiskManager application suite.

The BPC SurveyManager Maintenance WebClient is getting some new features to expand the range of surveys that can be built with it.  We have kept it artificially simplified now for a number of years as it was always intended to be an entry point solution, but the increasingly complex surveys some of the heavier survey manager clients wish to create mean that we really must make more of the survey engines huge range of capabilities available in the web client.   We have recently completed an analysis of the types of clients using our survey technologies heavilly, and those of you making the heaviest and best use of the tech are also those attempting the most complex of surveys.  

The current web client just does not do the underlying survey engine justice and we feel it is time to really let it stretch its legs.   We will try and keep the over-all feeling of simplicity the same, and in fact some things will seem to get simpler because the current release tries makes some things just too mindless by doing a whole lot for you in the background.

Even so, we are told, our web client is still way more powerful than most similar survey clients, but if you like the current one, just wait for the enhancements coming.

Oh, and don’t forget, that we host surveys on our servers, so you can contract us to manage your survey needs on your behalf.  The service includes your own database, the survey engine, emailing invitations, the portal, at least daily backups, 24 hour monitoring, responder assistance, maintenance of the data and content and even assistance with creation of surveys.  All clients are encouraged to try out this extremely economical service as an alternative to doing it yourself.  The distributed nature of BPC SurveyManager means you can exchange surveys and data with our servers to feed back into your risk systems, for example (or just point your survey manager or risk manager clients at our servers in addition to using the web client).